Clarence Darrow
If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man.Collection: Men
Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man.Collection: War
No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.Collection: Good Friend
The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions.Collection: Men
We're all killers at heart . . . . I have never taken anybody's life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction.Collection: Taken
My constitution was destroyed long ago; now I am living under the bylaws.Collection: Long Ago
Cheating, having 'hoes,' none of that is cute. To be honest, it's really immature. I don't see how people take pride in breaking someone's heart. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.Collection: Cute
No nation can be really great that is held together by Gatling guns, and no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.Collection: Loyalty
It may never come, but I fancy than no man who has sympathy for the human race does not wish that sometime those who labor should have the whole product of their toil. Probably it will never come, but I wish that the time might come when men who work in the industries would own the industries.Collection: Business
Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was fifth.Collection: People
We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.Collection: Men
For to know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation.Collection: Anger
Everybody is a potential murderer. I've never killed anyone, but I frequently get satisfaction reading the obituary notices.Collection: Funny
Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.Collection: Mean
All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.Collection: Men
We know life is futile. A man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a padded cell.Collection: Life
Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.Collection: Believe
In life one cannot eat his cake and have it, too; he must make his choice and then do the best he can to be content to go the way his judgment leads.Collection: Cake
An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths.Collection: Religious
Probably the undertaker thinks less of death than almost any other man. He is so accustomed to it that his mind must involuntarily turn from its horror to a contemplation of how much he makes out of the burial.Collection: Men
The consideration and kindness shown by unfortunates to each other are surprising to those who have no experience with this class of men. Often to find real sympathy you must go to those who know what misery means.Collection: Kindness
Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class cannot be safely ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex, heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things contribute to human behavior, to make it possible to trace all actions to a single cause.Collection: Class
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed.Collection: Men
If a man really has charge of his destiny at all, he should have something to say about getting born; and I only came through by a hair's-breadth. What had I to do with this momentous first step? In the language of the lawyer, I was not even a party of the second part.Collection: Party
When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature.Collection: Book
In the great flood of human life that is spawned upon the earth, it is not often that a man is born.Collection: Men
I am an agnostic as to the question of God.Collection: Agnostic
Thirteen states with a population less than that of New York State alone can prevent repeal [of prohibition] until Halley's comet returns. One might as well talk about a summer vacation on Mars.Collection: Summer
Criminal cases receive the attention of the press. The cruel and disagreeable things of life are more apt to get the newspaper space than the pleasant ones. It must be that most people enjoy hearing of and reading about the troubles of others. Perhaps men unconsciously feel that they rise in the general level as others go down.Collection: Reading
Punishment as punishment is not admissible unless the offender has had the freewill to select his course.Collection: Punishment
The purpose of life is to live it.Collection: Purpose
Those who enjoy the emotion of hating are much like the groups who sate their thirst for blood by hunting and hounding to death helpless animals as an outlet for their emotions.Collection: Hate
In order to have enough freedom, it is necessary to have too much.Collection: Order
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man.Collection: Jealous
The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery.Collection: Courage
Physical deformity, calls forth our charity. But the infinite misfortune of moral deformity calls forth nothing but hatred and vengeance.Collection: Hatred
Great wealth often curses all who touch it.Collection: Wealth
Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.Collection: Mean
Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.Collection: Hero
Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?Collection: Believe
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.Collection: Jealous
You can't get to a pleasant place to be at unless you use pleasant methods to get there. When you are dealing with a human society the means is fully as important as the end.Collection: Life
Chloroform unfit children. Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit to live.Collection: Children
Most lawyers only tell you about the cases they win. I can tell you about some I lose. A lawyer who wins all his cases does not have many.Collection: Winning
Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law. ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man.Collection: Running
There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other.Collection: Men
Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business, and, besides, could not be done. The line between honesty and dishonesty is a narrow, shifting one and usually lets those get by that are the most subtle and already have more than they can use.Collection: Honesty
Chase after the truth like all hell.Collection: Truth